In a time of historical nightmare, Fred Marchant manages to give us a lyrical impulse that consoles. . . In a time of lies and mediocre ironies in literature, here is the voice that is never afraid to say what matters.

How should a poem respond to the fundamentally unacceptable dimensions of human experience? What good is a poem in the face of irremediable illness, the death of innocents, human predation? Why persist in searching for words and images that inevitably prove inadequate to experiences that seem beyond words, beyond imagining? These are the questions that reside at the core of SAID NOT SAID.